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First of all, I really like Fantina! Although the Hearthome gym battle hasn't taken place yet, she already belongs to my favorite Sinnoh gym leaders! Her French dialect was a welcome change and her glamorous dress was stunning. Her violet eye shadow was perhaps a teense bit too exaggerated and made her look too old, (Girls, what do you think about that?) but that was really trivial if you ask me.
Probably it's just me but the best about her was that she somehow reminded me of Cynthia!
No, I'm not kidding. You see, most of her features, namely her glamor, the dress, and her strength, could as well be ascribed to my beloved Cynthia.:blush::blush:

However, here's why I couldn't entirely enjoy this week's episode:
It's damn hard for an Ash-Fan to admit that, but he failed miserably today :mad:
I haven't seen such a bad performance of him for ages:uhoh:
To make things worse, I have the worrying feeling that Chimchar will be neglected and screwed up! Let's do some straight talking: When has Chimchar done something really significant since Ash got him? After almost 50 episodes he hasn't even won a gym batte yet!! (In "Chim-charred" he wasn't the "normal" Chimchar!)
I really love Chimmy and it brakes my heart having to see how badly he is treated by the writers...:thumbd: Will Paul really be right in the end or do you think that his standing will improve?...some day...

Anyways, Ash, I was really diappointed and even somewhat shocked today!
Pikachu can't handle a little, unenvolved(!!!) ballon Pokemon?! That is,sorry for having to say that, but that is alarming. Pikachu has already faced much stronger Pokemon than a Driftloon and could stand his own almost every time!
I'm really lacking the words to describe how surprised and shocked I am.
Just imagine: If Paul had been there watching, he would surely have made fun of Ash... How humiliating!

Well, on the one hand a successful introduction of the awesome Fantina but on the other a sad defeat for Ash. Of course, he had to lose in the first encounter with Fantina, but was it really necessary that he was swept away that much?

6.5 out of 10 points

Imagine Paul facing Fantina. Just by looking at her Mismagius, I'm sure that even Paul's Weavile and Hochkrow would have problems. Weavile got humiliated by Cynthia's Garchomp, so it would be real amusing to see Weavile lose right off the bat from Hypnosis, and the irony is that it's supposed to be great against Ghost-types.

Seriously though, the anime doesn't follow game mechanics, which was way Drifloon had so much stamina to take even the nastiest electric attack.

For anyone who still cares, I found all the things Fantina says in French. She says alors (kind of like "so" or "well") a lot. Anyway....

Battle with Zoey:

My battling style is something to see, n'est-ce pas [isn't it]?

Psywave, tout de suite [right now]!

Merci ŕ vous [thank you]! You were a most formidable opponent!

Enchantée [~Pleased to meet you]. My name is Fantina. A true plaisir [pleasure].

The thing is, I've now become a traveling trainer, just like you! And so I regret to say that gives me no other choice but to leave the Hearthome gym en vacances [on vacation].

In the Pokémon Center:

I'm sorry, but c'est impossible [that's impossible].

And the Hearthome gym was able to open with moi [me] as its leader.

Alors, you understand my feelings. (Brock says oui [yes].)

Bien sűr [of course]! Which finally led me to realize one more thing: I had to create a... new style of battling, one that would combine the beauty of competición [seriously, the way she says it sounds more Spanish] with the ferocity of the battlefield!

No, not quite yet, ma chérie [my dear].

But since my Pokémon are feeling trčs fatigués [very tired], I'm afraid I'll only be able to battle with one of you.

Mais oui, ma chérie [of course, my dear] Dawn. I promise! Bien sűr. Meanwhile, let's all keep working since you can't count your Torchic before they hatch, n'est-ce pas [right]? (This is when Brock asks Zoey if she had any idea what Fantina just said.)

Evidently, the line up for Maylene won't cut it for Fantina. Not even a little bit.

And the Oscar for the best sweeping goes to..!

6/10 All the key words were used for a frenchie in a dub. But she's high-strung and crudités compared to the glee of the foreigners in Yugioh GX. Missing a great piece de resistance insert duly noted. The battling (the meat of this ep) was moderate, I do like inventive moves by Driffloom. Blowing offense, and skillfully evading to maintain distance is a strategy that needs headway in this show. All the birds and the gals seem to love the buzz from crash landing, so ghosts is all I get. Let's just hope that Ash's pokemon don't start twirling, and Fantina's continue whirling, or we might just have ourselves a Spin Zone.

...uhh...you do realize that Latin is a dead language, don't you? Or are you talking about Latin America?

Anyway, onto the episode...I haven't reviewed anything in a while, so this will probably suck. Oh well. This was a pretty good episode, and I was more impressed with the animation than I thought I would be. What I actually liked most about the art was how well Melissa's facial expressions were portrayed. She was hilariously over-the-top, and all around I'd say that they did a good job of retaining her personality from the games.

So, onto the episode itself. It had all the components of an interesting episode, but for some reason they didn't add up quite as well as they could have. I think they spent a little too much time on the battling in this one, considering that it was just a practice battle. The flashback giving Melissa a little backstory was pretty nice. It fleshed out her character a little...and it gave the writers an excuse for all those times she was out of the gym without a replacement. Excuses are always good. (Kids, that was sarcasm.)

Maybe it didn't turn out so well because they were trying too hard. Nozomi in a non-contest (not even pre-contest) episode, cameos of Adan and that one nosepass guy, Musashi's alter ego...the list goes on. They didn't really need to pack that much stuff into one episode if they're going to take up half of it with a battle. Then again, what kind of fan am I if I think that long pokemon battles are tedious...?

Speaking of the battle, I have to say that I like how they incorporated game mechanics into it more than usual. And as far as I remember, this is the first good acknowledgment of how utterly frustrating Hypnosis is. I feel your pain, Satoshi. I feel your pain.

Before I wrap this up, a little note on the voice actors: I was much more impressed with Fantina's VA's performance than Melissa's. Maybe it's just because I hear Japanese spoken with real English accents a lot, but Melissa's sounded extraordinarily fake. Fantina's French and accented English was great, and I have to give Bella Hudson kudos for her performance.

All in all, despite having lots of good stuff in it, the episode seemed a teeny bit forced, and the practice battle was far too long for a practice battle episode. It wasn't bad at all, but I've seen better.

This episode was pretty good. I'm glad they gave Fantina a French accent; it would be pretty lame if she didn't have one.
And asdfjkl; Drifloon! I love them so much. But I never realized they had mouths... O.o Still, Fantina's is pretty beastly. And her Mismagius too, wow.

And what's with the random cameos? There was Juan, and that Nosepass kid. (He the CotD before, right?)
Andd they actually used the Poketch! /shock

i like the cameos in the D&P series speciality the ones whit Marina(Krystal).

How could the Alan guy have faced Fantina with a Probopass. In Season 10( Diamond and Pearl(, when Ash made it to Hearthome, Fantina wasn't there( and they participated in the Tag Battle), In Season 11( DP:Battle Dimension), they meet Alan with his Nosepass. During that episode, it evolved. In Arriving in Style, they return to Hearthome, Fantina is still not there. How could he have battled Fantina, if Fantina wasn't in the gym, and his Nosepass had just evolved.

At least Ash finally got to meet Fantina in this episode, it was about time after more than half a season. Too bad he didn't do well against her in battle, but at least he would make up for it later and gain a new battling style in the process. Plus, it gave us a good running gag for a few episodes with Ash falling asleep trying to think of a way to stop hypnosis. LOL

New shinies week of/ 8/3-8/10: None, playing Moon
New shinies week of 8/10-8/17: None, playing Moon

Yay, about time Fantina appeared in the anime. She was just as crazy as I thought she was in the games. I mean, leaving the Gym? During a time where challengers are eager to get her badge? She should've been fired

I loved that we got a sample of her Pokemon's abilities. The fact that her Pokemon knew Hypnosis and that it alway affected the opponent's Pokemon was unbelievable. She's really tough, even for a Gym Leader.

Glad she was interested in Contests too, but I sure do hope Ash develops a way to counter Hypnosis. 9/10

I LOVED Fantina's voice and accent, they suited her very well. The only thing I don't like is her battling style. To me, using Hypnosis over and over again to win her matches just seemed kind of cheap. Good episode though.

This episode got better the further it went along, until finally, I think it finished as a solid episode.

I had to laugh at Ash's rxn to Fantina's reasoning for her leave from the gym. Ash wasn't happy about things to begin with, but after hearing her explanation and Brock's/Zoey's approval, he basically says, "You're right! Okay, let's battle!" I'm not quite so sure he agreed with her, but just played along, since all he really wanted was a battle. And he got it, by the luck of the coin toss (Dawn's Charlie Brown expression was probably my favorite part of this episode). As for the battle, it's okay. I have a special memory from watching Ash's gym battle with Morty back in Jhoto, and so, as far as showcasing the wackiness of ghost-type battling, I prefer Morty's gym battle a good deal more. But in terms of thinking skills, which I also like a good deal, this battle will lay the foundation for one of the best efforts Ash has to put into developing a strategy for a gym. It's not a spurt of the moment thing; it takes him a few episodes to come up with what to do (even if, as other people have pointed out, what he eventually comes up with is a technique we've sort of seen before). I didn't notice this the first few times I've watched this episode, but these 3 pokemon are the exact same pokemon Ash uses in the gym battle later on, and that's one of his philosophies, I think: losses sometimes are the fault of strategy, and not the pokemon (or, it's more important to battle smarter than necessarily to battle harder, doing it the same way). Paul has criticized Ash a few times in the region for not taking responsibility of his pokemon (losses are the trainer's fault, I think he said), but he's quite wrong about this. Ash does understand this fact, and works with his pokemon to fit the strategy; Paul is the one who's more likely to give up on the pokemon and find stronger ones. Paul is supposedly the better of the two at tactics, and maybe in traditional tactics he is. But Ash's gift as a trainer is to come up with creative strategies, that fit the strengths of any pokemon (well, almost any type....that's a little later down the road, and this, I think by general consensus, is one of the stunning/surprising things about Ash's pokemon in Sinnoh, in how many times this pokemon was defeated after it evolved, with Ash never quite getting the hang of how to battle with it). And so, I think while Paul has the greater likelihood of being the stronger trainer just by traditional means and tactics, Ash is the one who has the chance to be something really special (a pokemon master, I guess). And maybe that's part of the reason Ash bothers Paul so much.

The way this episode started out, though, I was really thinking of saying that the Sinnoh storyline has really become predictable again. Just like after the Tag Team Battle, where everything seemed like it would be predictable. What changed things then was Dawn losing in the appeal round of her 2nd contest in a row, and that storyline concluded pretty much at the Wallace Cup. It's been quite a few episodes since then, and again it seems like things will go the routine way. Ash's struggles with Fantina's hypnosis is the beginning, again, of more interesting things in the overall story of this region; there's also going to be the introduction of 2 more rivals pretty soon, one for Ash and one for Dawn (although for Dawn's, I'm not quite sure how soon is soon), that really makes the story more interesting. Mind you, they are not the super serious rivals that Paul and Zoey are, but they are fun to watch. In Dawn's case, that rival is quite frankly her most interesting one, and it's pretty obvious the writers realize that, since Dawn ends up battling her 3 times in contests, which is amazing considering how few contest adventures were left for Dawn at that time. It's a real shame that that rival did not appear earlier, and was Dawn's main rival. Ash's rival is not one he battles too much, but he's such a fun character, that it's okay. Just having him around is enough, and just a few episodes into the next region (12, or 13?), we've seen someone with a similar personality, and it was just as welcome to watch. So things will get more interesting, and I think this episode is the start of that, into what I suppose is the 3rd "chapter" of Sinnoh (I'll call it that, anyway).

This episode was ok... It was cool to see Fantina for the 1st time. It was cool to see Gardenia's Drifloon evolve into Drifblim. Unfortunately that made Drifblim much too difficult to defeat for Ash. Ash didn't really stand much of a chance against Fantina, her Pokemon was so powerful, not to mention his Pokemon kept falling asleep from Hypnosis and then knocked right out. It was cool to see Ominous Wind for the 1st time. Zoey lost as well.

Looking back, I kinda felt bad for Zoey's Glameow here; seeing Fantina's Mismagius overwhelming it was kinda sad imho. I really liked seeing a run down of what Fantina did as a citizen of Hearthome City; I especially liked seeing that Probopass guy in her flashback. Fantina's Drifloon impressed me when it beat Buizel and Chimchar even before evolving.